Labor will back PNG team in NRL

Getting a Papua New Guinean team into the NRL is now official Labor policy.

An amendment at Labor's national conference in Adelaide on Tuesday committed the party to investigating how to get a PNG team into Australia's rugby league competition.

"A Papua New Guinean team in the NRL would do more to introduce PNG into Australian popular thought than anything else," Labor frontbencher Richard Marles said.

He said State of Origin was so popular in PNG that a cannon could be fired down a main street in Port Moresby without hitting anyone when a game is on.

The team would be pursued as a foreign policy initiative as well as a sporting one aimed at building economic and cultural links, if Labor wins the next federal election.

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in PNG in November he spoke with Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, who said his country's love of rugby league was one of the major legacies from Australia's colonial rule.